Anne Applebaum

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author, professor, and historian offers an expert guide to understanding the appeal of the strongman as a leader and an explanation for why authoritarianism is back with a menacing twenty-first century twist. Across the world today, from the Americas to Europe and beyond, liberal democracy is under siege while populism and nationalism are on the rise. In Twilight of Democracy, prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum offers an unexpected explanation: that there is a deep and inherent appeal to authoritarianism, to strongmen, and, especially, to one-party rule--that is, to political systems that benefit true believers, or loyal soldiers, or simply the friends and distant cousins of the Leader, to the exclusion of everyone else. People, she argues, are not just ideological; they are also practical, pragmatic, opportunistic. They worry about their families, their houses, their careers. Some political systems offer them possibilities, and others don't. In particular, the modern authoritarian parties that have arisen within democracies today offer the possibility of success to people who do not thrive in the meritocratic, democratic, or free-market competition that determines access to wealth and power. Drawing on reporting in Spain, Switzerland, Poland, Hungary, and Brazil; using historical examples including Stalinist central Europe and Nazi Germany; and investigating related phenomena: the modern conspiracy theory, nostalgia for a golden past, political polarization, and meritocracy and its discontents, Anne Applebaum brilliantly illuminates the seduction of totalitarian thinking and the eternal appeal of the one-party state.

The momentous new book from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag and Iron Curtain. In 1932-33, nearly four million Ukrainians died of starvation, having been deliberately deprived of food. It is one of the most devastating episodes in the history of the twentieth century. With unprecedented authority and detail, Red Famine investigates how this happened, who was responsible, and what the consequences were. It is the fullest account yet published of these terrible events. The book draws on a mass of archival material and first-hand testimony only available since the end of the Soviet Union, as well as the work of Ukrainian scholars all over the world. It includes accounts of the famine by those who survived it, describing what human beings can do when driven mad by hunger. It shows how the Soviet state ruthlessly used propaganda to turn neighbours against each other in order to expunge supposedly 'anti-revolutionary' elements. It also records the actions of extraordinary individuals who did all they could to relieve the suffering. The famine was rapidly followed by an attack on Ukraine's cultural and political leadership - and then by a denial that it had ever happened at all. Census reports were falsified and memory suppressed. Some western journalists shamelessly swallowed the Soviet line; others bravely rejected it, and were undermined and harassed. The Soviet authorities were determined not only that Ukraine should abandon its national aspirations, but that the country's true history should be buried along with its millions of victims. Red Famine, a triumph of scholarship and human sympathy, is a milestone in the recovery of those memories and that history. At a moment of crisis between Russia and Ukraine, it also shows how far the present is shaped by the past.

The Gulag—the vast array of Soviet concentration camps—was a system of repression and punishment whose rationalized evil and institutionalized inhumanity were rivaled only by the Holocaust. The Gulag entered the world's historical consciousness in 1972, with the publication of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's epic oral history of the Soviet camps, The Gulag Archipelago. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, dozens of memoirs and new studies covering aspects of that system have been published in Russia and the West. Using these new resources as well as her own original historical research, Anne Applebaum has now undertaken, for the first time, a fully documented history of the Soviet camp system, from its origins in the Russian Revolution to its collapse in the era of glasnost. It is an epic feat of investigation and moral reckoning that places the Gulag where it belongs: at the center of our understanding of the troubled history of the twentieth century. Anne Applebaum first lays out the chronological history of the camps and the logic behind their creation, enlargement, and maintenance. The Gulag was first put in place in 1918 after the Russian Revolution. In 1929, Stalin personally decided to expand the camp system, both to use forced labor to accelerate Soviet industrialization and to exploit the natural resources of the country's barely habitable far northern regions. By the end of the 1930s, labor camps could be found in all twelve of the Soviet Union's time zones. The system continued to expand throughout the war years, reaching its height only in the early 1950s. From 1929 until the death of Stalin in 1953, some 18 million people passed through this massive system. Of these 18 million, it is estimated that 4.5 million never returned. But the Gulag was not just an economic institution. It also became, over time, a country within a country, almost a separate civilization, with its own laws, customs, literature, folklore, slang, and morality. Topic by topic, Anne Applebaum also examines how life was lived within this shadow country: how prisoners worked, how they ate, where they lived, how they died, how they survived. She examines their guards and their jailers, the horrors of transportation in empty cattle cars, the strange nature of Soviet arrests and trials, the impact of World War II, the relations between different national and religious groups, and the escapes, as well as the extraordinary rebellions that took place in the 1950s. She concludes by examining the disturbing question why the Gulag has remained relatively obscure, in the historical memory of both the former Soviet Union and the West. Gulag: A History will immediately be recognized as a landmark work of historical scholarship and an indelible contribution to the complex, ongoing, necessary quest for truth.

All of us have in our minds a cartoon image of what an autocratic state looks like, with a bad man at the top. But in the 21st century, that cartoon bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays, autocracies are run not by one bad guy, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, security services and professional propagandists. The members of these networks are connected not only within a given country, but among many countries. The corrupt, state-controlled companies in one dictatorship do business with corrupt, state-controlled companies in another. The police in one country can arm, equip, and train the police in another. The propagandists share resources—the troll farms that promote one dictator’s propaganda can also be used to promote the propaganda of another—and themes, pounding home the same messages about the weakness of democracy and the evil of America. Unlike military or political alliances from other times and places, this group doesn’t operate like a bloc, but rather like an agglomeration of Autocracy, Inc. Their relations are not based on values, but are rather transactional, which is why they operate so easily across ideological, geographical, and cultural lines. In truth, they are in full agreement about only one Their dislike of us, the inhabitants of the democratic world, and their desire to see both our political systems and our values undermined. That shared understanding of the world—where it comes from, why it lasts, how it works, how the democratic world has unwittingly helped to consolidate it, and how we can help bring it down—is the subject of this book.

At the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union unexpectedly found itself in control of a huge swathe of territory in Eastern Europe. Stalin and his secret police set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to a completely new political and moral system: communism. In Iron Curtain, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum describes how the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete. Applebaum describes in devastating detail how political parties, the church, the media, young people's organizations - the institutions of civil society on every level - were quickly eviscerated. She explains how the secret police services were organized, how the media came to be dominated by communists, and how all forms of opposition were undermined and destroyed. Ranging widely across new archival material and many sources unknown in English, she follows the communists' tactics as they bullied, threatened and murdered their way to power. She also chronicles individual lives to show the choices people had to make - to fight, to flee, or to collaborate. Within a remarkably short period after the end of the war, Eastern Europe had been ruthlessly Stalinized. Iron Curtain is a brilliant history of a brutal period and a haunting reminder of how fragile free societies can be. Today the Soviet Bloc is a lost civilization, one whose cruelty, paranoia, bizarre morality, and strange aesthetics Anne Applebaum captures in the pages of this exceptional work of historical and moral reckoning.

La ganadora del Premio Pulitzer Anne Applebaum arroja luz sobre uno de los más atroces genocidios de la historia de Europa. Anne Applebaum, ganadora del Premio Pulitzer por Gulag y finalista del National Book Award por El Telón de Acero, cuenta en Hambruna roja la reveladora historia de uno de los peores crímenes de la era soviética. En 1929, la gran colectivización puesta en marcha por Stalin forzó a millones de campesinos a entregar sus tierras. El resultado fue una hambruna sin precedentes; al menos cinco millones de personas perecieron entre 1931 y 1934 en la URSS, de los cuales cuatro eran ucranianos. En Hambruna roja, Anne Applebaum argumenta que esas muertes no fueron accidentales, ni consecuencias colaterales de una mala política pública, sino absolutamente deliberadas y planeadas. Con acceso a archivos clasificados, testimonios de supervivientes y las detalladas investigaciones de académicos ucranianos repartidos por todo el mundo, Applebaum analiza cómo el Estado soviético orquestó la catástrofe para deshacerse de un problema político. Porque Stalin estaba decidido: Ucrania debía abandonar sus aspiraciones nacionalistas y eso pasaba por enterrar su verdadera historia junto a millones de víctimas inocentes. Definitivo y devastador, este libro captura el horror de gente ordinaria que luchó por sobrevivir un mal extraordinario. En un triunfo de erudición y empatía, Applebaum recupera una historia olvidada en un momento de crisis geopolítica entre Rusia y Ucrania que demuestra hasta qué punto el pasado moldea el presente.

The Gulag—the vast array of Soviet concentration camps—was a system of repression and punishment whose rationalized evil and institutionalized inhumanity were rivaled only by the Holocaust. The Gulag entered the world's historical consciousness in 1972, with the publication of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's epic oral history of the Soviet camps, The Gulag Archipelago. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, dozens of memoirs and new studies covering aspects of that system have been published in Russia and the West. Using these new resources as well as her own original historical research, Anne Applebaum has now undertaken, for the first time, a fully documented history of the Soviet camp system, from its origins in the Russian Revolution to its collapse in the era of glasnost. It is an epic feat of investigation and moral reckoning that places the Gulag where it belongs: at the center of our understanding of the troubled history of the twentieth century. Anne Applebaum first lays out the chronological history of the camps and the logic behind their creation, enlargement, and maintenance. The Gulag was first put in place in 1918 after the Russian Revolution. In 1929, Stalin personally decided to expand the camp system, both to use forced labor to accelerate Soviet industrialization and to exploit the natural resources of the country's barely habitable far northern regions. By the end of the 1930s, labor camps could be found in all twelve of the Soviet Union's time zones. The system continued to expand throughout the war years, reaching its height only in the early 1950s. From 1929 until the death of Stalin in 1953, some 18 million people passed through this massive system. Of these 18 million, it is estimated that 4.5 million never returned. But the Gulag was not just an economic institution. It also became, over time, a country within a country, almost a separate civilization, with its own laws, customs, literature, folklore, slang, and morality. Topic by topic, Anne Applebaum also examines how life was lived within this shadow country: how prisoners worked, how they ate, where they lived, how they died, how they survived. She examines their guards and their jailers, the horrors of transportation in empty cattle cars, the strange nature of Soviet arrests and trials, the impact of World War II, the relations between different national and religious groups, and the escapes, as well as the extraordinary rebellions that took place in the 1950s. She concludes by examining the disturbing question why the Gulag has remained relatively obscure, in the historical memory of both the former Soviet Union and the West. Gulag: A History will immediately be recognized as a landmark work of historical scholarship and an indelible contribution to the complex, ongoing, necessary quest for truth.

År 1929 lanserade Stalin kollektiviseringen av lantbruket, något som kan beskrivas som den andra ryska revolutionen. Den tvingade miljoner bönder att lämna sina gårdar och inordna sig i kollektiv. Resultatet blev en katastrofal hungersnöd, den dödligaste i europeisk historia. Svälten slog till ögonblickligen och människor började äta allt de kom över: gräs, bark, hundar eller lik. "Röd hungersnöd" är ett skakande och vederhäftigt vittnesbörd om de människor som dukade under och om de som kämpade för att överleva denna ohyggliga ondska.

I denne brennaktuelle og nødvendige boken ber Anne Applebaum verdens demokratier om å fundamentalt endre strategi i kampen mot en helt ny type trussel. Diktatorklubben er en skremmende fremstilling av hvordan autokratier samarbeider for å undergrave den demokratiske verden, og en innsiktsfull refleksjon rundt hvordan vi bør organisere oss for å bekjempe dem. Vi tror vi vet hvordan et autokratisk stat ser ut: Det er en allmektig leder på toppen. Han kontrollerer politiet. Politiet truer folket med vold. Det finnes onde samarbeidspartnere og kanskje noen modige dissidenter. Men i det 21. århundre stemmer dette lite overens med virkeligheten. Nå om dagen støttes autokratiene ikke bare av én diktator, men av sofistikerte nettverk som består av kleptokratiske finansielle strukturer, overvåkningsteknologier og profesjonelle propagandister som opererer på tvers av flere regimer – fra Kina til Russland til Iran. Korrupte selskaper i ett land driver handel med korrupte selskaper i et annet land. Politistyrker i ett land kan bevæpne og trene politi i et annet, mens propagandister deler ressurser og temaer, hamrer inn de samme budskapene om demokratiets svakhet og ondskapen ved Amerika. Internasjonal fordømmelse og økonomiske sanksjoner greier ikke å rokke ved autokratene. Selv folkelige opposisjonsbevegelser – fra Venezuela til Hong Kong til Moskva – står maktesløse i møte med dem. Medlemmene av Diktaturet & Co. er ikke knyttet sammen gjennom en samlende ideologi som kommunisme; deres fellesnevner er snarere et begjær etter makt, rikdom og straffefrihet. Anne Applebaum er amerikansk prisvinnende journalist og forfatter.